Even though 2019 would go down as Barbados’ bloodiest year, with the country recording its highest number of murders in a year, Commissioner of Police Tyrone Griffith, has said that the picture painted by the crime statistics, is not as bad as some may have thought.
In fact, he suggested that given how the first month of 2019 began with nine murders, the Royal Barbados Police Force should be applauded for bringing some measure of control to the problem. He explained that based on the murder rate trajectory after January 2019, Barbados was heading for over 100 murders last year.
And though Barbados has seen its first murder just five days into the new year, Griffith cautioned Barbadians against thinking that law enforcement is not taking the necessary steps to curb violence, especially those perpetrated through the use of a firearm.
“We should not pull out numbers in isolation. I see a lot of people talking about the fact that we have 48 murders. If you sit back and analyze the numbers, you would realize that in January alone there were nine murders. Based on that trajectory, one would have expected 108 murders by the end of 2019. So effectively something had to have been done to pull things back,” said Griffith, who was interviewed by Barbados TODAY ahead of the release of the 2019 Crime Statistics, expected later this week.
The Commissioner said that while the murder rate is high, major crimes fell in 2019 by 16 per cent. In fact, with the exception of murder, all categories of major crimes have seen notable reductions, which supports the point that Barbados does not have a run-away crime situation.
“We looked at serious crimes and when we looked at the numbers for this year, serious crimes are significantly down… by 16 per cent. The only area that is up in serious crimes is murder,” he explained, noting that an analysis of the murders has shown that the root causes run deep.
“We have to do a much deeper analysis of the murders to see where the programmes that we put in place could be better. A lot of the issues related to murder run far deeper than law enforcement, but everybody is looking to law enforcement for the answers. The reality is that there are deep-seated, social and economic issues that need to be urgently addressed. We should not pull out single items such as murders and try to form an opinion on the country’s crime situation,” Griffith explained.
He also pointed out that the police force was still suffering from a lack of manpower, a deficiency which the force intends to make up for through the use of creative planning and technology.
“We need to do a thorough assessment in order to determine where we can have improvements and where we have done well. The fact remains that we are still hampered by resources and that is why a lot of our programmes have to be far more intense and driven by technology,” said Griffith.
He further noted that with Government’s ambitious agenda for 2020, the limited resources of the police force are expected to be stretched even further.
colvillemounsey@barbadostoday.bb
